It’s been fourteen months since we last discussed Growbot here at B3, an adorable trailer released back in the summer of last year, showing off some of its amazing, hand-drawn artwork in action.
Much to my delight, Growbot was a one of the finalists at the Develop Indie Showcase down at the Develop Expo in Brighton earlier in the year. The team, Wabisabi Play, had managed to make it to the final ten and had a build of the game on show.
Growbot, if you’ve not heard of it, is a point-and-click adventure game which follows the story of Nara, who is a growbot and captain-in-training. They must explore their life-abundant spaceship and solve puzzles to repulse and remove a rapidly growing crystal which is invading their ship.
The artwork and music was absolutely perfect, as I had hoped, with each scene jutting out from the darkness that outlines the screen — plantlife and beams of light spilling over, giving an amazing feeling of focus to each room. Moving items and puzzles animate with a juddery pace, giving off the feeling of a spot-motion production which works at odds with the illustrated style in a way that is still with me at time of writing.
It’s hard to convey the spirit of otherworldliness Growbot possesses. It has a distinct visual style — which is normally limited to the creations of Amanita Design (Machinarium, Samarost etc.) — but plays with little dots of colours in ways unseen in other point-and-click games. Every scene is as if somebody insisted that each colour on the palette had to be used, resulting in little markers, flowers, fruit and glowing bottles filling the spaces where other developers would have likely simply added another shade of the most prominent colour.
Growbot does not yet have a release date, however when it does launch it will do so on PC. If you want to stay up to date with the game, you can wishlist it on Steam or follow the developer on Twitter.
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